


all I want for christmas (is you)

by blackeyedblonde



Series: -What We've Got- Verse [5]
Category: True Detective
Genre: Christmas, Comfort Sex, Domestic Bliss, Established Relationship, Fluff, Future Fic, Light Angst, M/M, Making Love, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 23:47:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5475059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackeyedblonde/pseuds/blackeyedblonde
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rust hums something wordless in his throat, fingers following the delicate line of Ghost’s spine. He swallows before his eyes crack back open, peering at Marty through the light coming off the lamp and Christmas tree. </p><p>“Had somewhere I was planning to be tomorrow,” he says, and then looks away again, throat bobbing in place. “Was thinking about making the drive out to Houston.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	all I want for christmas (is you)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [A_Hodgepodge_of_Nothings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Hodgepodge_of_Nothings/gifts).



> Exactly what it reads on the tin: angst, domestic Christmas fare, and a whole lot of comfort porn. Take that last part seriously, folks, because the lovin' scene in this was mined by Keebler elves from the summit of Big Rock Candy Mountain. This story is also excerpted from within my "What We've Got" verse and takes place several years in the future, so I hope the new details aren't anything confusing.
> 
> Dedicated to the lovely and talented Audrey, who has been a very kind friend to me this year and who deserves a world full of Christmas joy for bringing so much into my life through her beautiful artwork. Sorry this is a bit late for your birthday, Miss Audrey, but I hope you enjoy it all the same. <3

  
  
The streetlights flicker on early this time of year, coming to life one by one along the darkened street even though it’s just now brushing six o’clock. December is slowly unwinding down to its final breath but sunset hangs in spring watercolors at the edge of the western sky, fuchsia and violet and a touch of something that tastes like spun candy floss.

Rust stuffs his cold hands in his jean pockets and whistles once, letting it carry on an echo to the neighbor’s house and back before he squints into the dark. The blinking icicle lights on all the houses lining the street make the air glow sapphire and rose gold, and the awning he’s standing under is the only one on the block strung with the fat bulbs in different colors, a string of bright-lit nostalgia likely pulled from somewhere in Marty’s childhood.

Rust always like those best, though. He’d pulled the tangled lights from their water-stained cardboard box the weekend after Thanksgiving and stood at the foot of the ladder while Marty hammered and swore at the eaves from above. The tinted bulbs sounded like marbles clinking together in his hands, round and perfect enough that he’d had to fight off the faint and sudden urge to reach up and put one in his mouth.

Up in Alaska, back when he was a boy, he used to test those things more often, sometimes expecting something other than the taste of cold glass and a fine layer of dust. A mouthful of cinnamon clove instead of pine sap, spiced licorice in place of bitter fireweed root. But then Marty was reaching down for the lights and Rust had only passed them up, keeping both boots wedged on either side of the ladder while he listened to the bulbs make their faint music in Marty’s hands.

Here and now, a different kind of music sounds somewhere nearby, slowly coming up around the porch one small step at a time. The tinkle of a tiny bell shortly followed by another, and he waits until he sees a small apparition of familiar white manifest on the darkness before he turns to reopen the front door.

“C’mon, Peach,” he murmurs after Ghost disappears inside, waiting until a second little cat the color of orange marmalade over ice cream trots up the steps. “Lettin’ all the heat out.”

The lock turns and clicks behind him and Rust wades through cooler shadow until he’s stepping back into the bright warmth of the living room, a cocoon of fragrant fir tree and hot coffee and some Christmas special running its paces on TV while the old space heater hums in the corner. Marty has his socked feet kicked up on the coffee table, peering up over the rims of his glasses as he sips at the lip of his mug.

“You let them critters in for the night?” he asks, and Rust nods as he palms his own cup from where he’d left it on the kitchen counter before padding over to the sofa. He drops down on the far end opposite Marty and brings the coffee up to his mouth but doesn’t drink. A few moments pass and he breathes out the faintest sigh, just enough to whisper against the steam rising in front of his face.

Just enough for Marty to notice.

Rust’s feet are bare and Marty’s ache just looking at them, toes curling a little inside his thick socks. He’s half-tempted to henpeck Rust into next week about catching cold from walking around on the tile without shoes and socks like some kind of Tibetan snow monk, but he doesn’t say as much. He only warms his hands a little longer around his coffee and then sets it aside, clearing his throat as he pulls the folded blanket off the back of the couch and fluffs it up in his lap.

“Here,” he says, holding one hand out palm-up before letting it fall against the cushion next to his thigh. “Go ahead and get comfortable.”

Rust lowers his cup and lashes both, peering at Marty’s hand from under heavy lids before his eyes flick back up. He doesn’t move, letting the Folgers commercial on TV fill in the space between them.

Marty’s long since used to this routine and doesn’t intend on balking or letting Rust get the upper hand. “Your feet are probably colder n’ fucking ice,” he says, sliding his palm over the brown suede of the couch. “So hand them here.”

It takes some maneuvering around and the whisper of flannel and denim on the cushions, but Rust eventually gets spread out with his head propped back against one arm of the sofa. He tucks the toes of his left foot up under Marty’s thigh and settles the second in his lap, letting the other man cover it up with the soft blanket before pressing one thumb into the arch of his foot.

Marty tsks under his breath but doesn’t say anything more, idly passing warmth through the slow work of his warm hands. Another round of commercials cycle through in a content buzz of Christmas song, and it isn’t until Ghost has padded into the room and curled up on Rust’s stomach does Marty break back into the quiet.

“Davis’s are having their Christmas party tomorrow night,” he says, glancing over to where Rust is still sunk low on the cushions with his eyes slipped shut, one hand soft on the cat’s side. Marty knows he could sit here and beat around the bush with it ‘til Kingdom Come, but they’ve spent enough years wasting time and Rust never was too good at playing charades. “Was wondering if you wanted to come along this year.”

Rust hums something wordless in his throat, fingers following the delicate line of Ghost’s spine. He swallows before his eyes crack back open, peering at Marty through the light coming off the lamp and Christmas tree.

“Had somewhere I was planning to be tomorrow,” he says, and then looks away again, throat bobbing in place. “Was thinking about making the drive out to Houston.”

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve and Marty feels a chill skitter across his skin in an involuntary rush of something he wasn’t expecting, making the backs of his arms prickle and hurt. He’s dreaded the last week of December and the first week of January for the past six years like clockwork but the shadow of an old haunt doesn’t usually visit them so early, and this is the first time in a long while that it’s crept back far enough to touch Christmas.

But he’d be selfish to deny Rust the memorial of his grief, he thinks. Even more selfish to deny the man one day out of the year to pay respects to his little girl.

He doesn’t deny Rust anything anymore, and he doesn’t plan on starting that now.

“That—that’d be fine,” Marty says, trying to press all the bruised spots out of his voice like he’s covering dark spots on an apple. “I can tell them you had other business out of town.”

 _Other family you had to see_ _,_ he doesn’t say.

Rust still doesn’t look at him but he shifts a little under the blanket, the side of his left foot skimming Marty’s stomach.

“Not usually weighing on my mind so much until I get closer to January,” he says, words touched with something hoarse around the edges. “Just got it in my head that I wanted to see her, tomorrow.”

“Not—see her.” He pauses for a moment, passing a hand over his eyes. “You know what I mean.”

Marty nods, reaching down again to squeeze Rust’s foot through the soft fabric. “You go on and do whatever you gotta do,” he says, smiling a little. “So long as you’re back by tomorrow night, yeah?”

Rust nods twice and curls his fingers into Ghost’s fur again, mouth tightened up just a hair. Their eyes stray back to the television where a jewelry commercial has a man and a woman kissin’ it up under a sprig of mistletoe before admiring a platinum-set diamond the size of a chickpea, and be damned, Marty thinks, if that wasn’t the better answer all along.

“Hey,” he says, sounding a little more abrupt than he’d wanted, but he pushes on all the same. “What d’you think about me driving out there with you this year?”

Rust looks up this time and Marty clears his throat again. “If that’d be alright, you know.”

“Don’t want you having to spend the whole day in the car just to go out there,” Rust says after a long moment. “Especially with tomorrow being what it is, plans you already had and all.”

“Well, any plans I had can be cancelled on short notice,” Marty says. “And as for that first part, I’d have to say likewise. Least this way you wouldn’t be going it alone.”

Rust’s eyes lower again with his voice. “You know I’ve got no trouble with making the drive, Marty.”

“Yeah,” Marty says, getting a little warm in his cheeks, “but the whole point, I reckon, is that I wanted to be with you when you do.”

The space heater clicks off across the room, leaving the air around them more still and quiet than it was before. Rust’s gaze is somewhere back on the TV, and Marty knows he isn’t really watching it, letting the pictures and Christmas lights flicker across the glass of his eyes.

“Should be out of here by nine at the latest,” he says, and Marty tries not to sag in relief but knows that’s all the acquiescence he’ll get on something like this. “Take us about three hours before we hit Houston, another twenty to get into Glendale.”

“Alright,” Marty says, quiet, and then palms his phone off the side table to pull up Houston’s forecast. “Wonder if it’s any warmer in Texas than it is up here right now.”

“I’d dress warm,” Rust says even though Marty’s got a high of sixty-eight big and bright on his screen. “Bring a coat.”

“Supposed to be warmer there in the afternoon.”

“I don’t know,” Rust says, bringing one hand up to tuck behind his neck. “Always colder in there than you think.”  
  


* * *

 

Marty watches Rust over breakfast early the next morning, drinking his black coffee and spreading apple jelly onto a piece of toast while he scans over the newspaper. He’d been up before first light and didn’t linger under the covers, going to fiddle with the coffee maker and top off the cats’ dish before stepping into Marty’s fleece-lined house shoes to walk out into the December morning. When he came back into the bedroom a little while later to set a steaming mug on the bedside table he smelled like cold water and the crisp edge of morning, leaving just as quietly as he came to pad back down the hall and rustle open the news section.

They don’t pass many words back and forth while they eat, and Rust only makes it through his toast and a few bites of scrambled egg before he’s pushing away from the kitchen table and toting his dishes to the sink.

And it isn’t the third day in January but Marty can still see a ghost of it hanging in the air while Rust shuffles around the cold kitchen in a borrowed bathrobe. It feels like a thin splinter stuck in the heel of his hand, barely there but bothersome all the same when he hits it right.

He wonders if they’ll ever outrun that, if Rust will ever not ache at the high point on the spinning wheel of every new year.

The answer to that comes from behind where Rust is still standing at the sink, peering out the window into the grey dawn. “This time of year,” he says, letting each syllable fall down the drain while both hands brace on the countertop. “Tends to turn over stones I don’t make a hard habit of paying any visit to.”

Marty knows that feeling well enough that it makes something hot burn behind his eyes for just a fleeting second, a sharp pinch of regret on the soft inside of his forearm come and gone. But he knows he got back some of what he lost, in the end, dead as it might’ve seemed inside ten years he’d like to forget.

Rust never was so lucky.

“Go ahead and get the first shower,” Marty says, reaching up to scratch through the whiskers on his jaw as he looks at the ticking clock on the kitchen wall. “I’ll be back there in a minute.”

He only gets up to rinse his plate when he hears the water start running in the bathroom down the hall.

   
  


 

Rust walks back into the bedroom while Marty is shrugging his jacket on over a long-sleeved flannel, silhouetted in such a way against the brightening daylight coming in through the window that, for a moment, he looks suspended there like a posed scarecrow.

He watches as Rust fastens his watch around his left wrist and keeps both eyes cast toward the floor, moving through the room like he’s trying to sidestep his own shadow. He’s already laced into his boots and pulls his brown leather jacket off a hanger in the closet, letting it hang there in one hand while he digs around in his bedside table for something Marty can’t see.

The sound of paper and some of Rust’s preferred clutter shifting around stops short and he quickly shuts the drawer, moving in one fluid motion for his side of the dresser to do the same. That search seems to come up fruitless, too, and then Rust is silently stalking back out of the bedroom and down the hall.

Marty hears the office door creak open before turning in place to look at the little ceramic dish they keep on the dresser. It’s full of loose change and a pair of broken cufflinks he’d been meaning to take to the jeweler, and a dollar bill sits folded on the top, hiding most of the trinkets tucked underneath. He walks over and brushes the dollar aside, and then palms the thing Rust had been looking for.

“Marty,” Rust’s voice carries from the office doorway, and then he’s chasing the echo of his own words back down the hall. “Have you seen—?”

“Right here,” Marty says, meeting him in the doorway so they’re standing toe to toe. He passes something small and smooth into Rust’s hand, earning a warm sigh of something like relief that tickles against the side of Marty’s face.

“Good,” Rust murmurs, nodding once as he squeezes the tiny trinket into the center of his palm. “Thank you.”

Marty smiles a bit but doesn’t step back yet, reaching up to palm Rust’s sides through his flannel. “Hey,” he says, thumb idly tracing the contour of Rust’s last rib on the right side, just below the wing of an inked purple bird. “You don’t gotta bring that, you don’t wanna. Just thought—”

“I want to,” Rust says before clearing his throat, dropping the bauble into his shirt pocket so it rests over his heart. He doesn’t try to pull away but the line of his body feels like a bowstring pulled back halfway under Marty’s hands, jacket caught in the fine sliver of space between them.

“Well then,” Marty says with a small smile, smoothing his hands down to Rust’s hips before trying to find the other man’s eyes. “I’m glad.”

He steps back and then Rust leans forward to follow him, threading the gap until he’s pressing a chaste kiss to corner of Marty’s mouth, almost like the fleeting peck of a garden bird. And then he’s gone again, already at the far end of the hall even while Marty still stands rooted to the spot with his skin buzzing.

“Need to get on the road,” Rust’s voice calls out, bolted back down to business. “I’ll drive going down, know the quickest route.”

It’s an unspoken thing, Marty supposes, that he’ll be the one bringing them home.

 

* * *

 

The green Beaumont exit passes like a trace current through the vein of another life, so distant now that Rust sometimes wonders if he and Marty ever lived through those long hours of measured oblivion at all. His memory is made up of a crosshatched clusterfuck of the tangible and intangible, and the things that take deepest root from that night are his pulse pounding in his neck even as they crossed the state line and then a broad hand around the back of it, keeping him steady while they fumbled over the unlocked threshold of his apartment.

“Haven’t been down that road in a while,” Marty murmurs from the passenger seat of the Cadillac, dipping a finger into Rust's thoughts. He's always posed a little strangely whenever he isn't driving, like he doesn’t know what to do with his hands when they aren’t wrapped around the steering wheel. Rust’s old answer to that always used to be lighting up a smoke and watching it burn down between his fingers; Marty bites the edge of a thumbnail before spreading his hands down his thighs, watching Texas unfold in front of them through the water-spotted windshield.

He snorts out a small laugh, shaking his head as the car goes dark for a split second beneath the shadow of a highway overpass. “Y’know,” he says, drawing Rust’s eyes over to that side of the car. “For a while, back after we flipped Ledoux’s place over, I had it in my head that your face was gonna show up on one of them sketches coming through the office. Warrant out in Texas for armed robbery, breaking and entering, posing as an officer of the law. Imagine being on one side of the glass looking at a lineup full of johns and the perp is standing right next to you with a badge on his hip.”

Rust narrows his eyes a little and doesn’t quite muster up a smile, looking back at the road. “What would you have done, they pegged something on me like that?”

Marty makes a noise in the back of his throat and shakes his head. “Shit if I know,” he says. “Told them to go looking for some other handsome motherfucker, I reckon. Probably come up with an alibi for your whereabouts after you came back in from Alaska, give ‘em the run-around.”

He holds his palms up like he’s inspecting them, making the gold band on his left hand catch and glint the light. “Would’ve figured it out, though,” he murmurs, with enough bull-dogged conviction that the corner of Rust’s mouth tugs up on one side for the first time all morning.

Going by the highway makers counting down to Houston, they’ve got about an hour left until they hit Glendale Cemetery. Rust can always feel it, the closer he gets. Something like a hanged man walking to the gallows; the inevitable downward tug of gravity.

The radio is playing low and the classic rock station he found at the Texas line went to commercial two minutes ago, so Marty reaches over to jimmy the dial. Every other channel is holiday music and a flurry of static, but he pauses for a moment on the upbeat croon of Mariah Carey’s voice in the merry throes of singing about what she wants for Christmas.

“Never did like this song,” Marty grunts, the same way he’ll murmur about needing to _work on somethin’ in the office_ whenever a certain five-year-old wants to watch Saturday afternoon cartoons cranked up to high hell in the living room.

Even so, he only bothers to switch the station after the chorus is belted through the car.

  
  


 

The streetlamps lining Magnolia Street have been festooned with lights and tinsel by the city, and Marty watches toy soldiers and candy cane decorations pass by overhead, shining dull red and silver and holiday-green in the overcast sky. A few frayed nerves prickle in his stomach and he tries to think of other things than what lies before them; the wrapped presents hidden in the office closet, how much spiced eggnog Rust drinks at Maggie’s even though he’ll never admit to liking it, a pair of tiny red cowboy boots and the smile he hopes to see on their new owner’s face when she opens the box.

But Rust looks straight ahead, unconcerned with the capitalistic hokum of Christmas flanking their path to Glendale. He thumbs the radio off and slows at the entrance before turning the Cadillac into the cemetery, past the wrought iron gates threaded with scarlet ribbon and evergreen and few unlit strands of icicle lights.

“Seems like a little too much fuss considering their main clientele don’t give a damn either way,” Rust says, gruff enough that it sounds closer to a growl. On any other day Marty knows he would’ve stepped up to that with an argument ready to fly off at the cuff, but here and now he doesn’t breathe a word.

A new thread of tension strikes like a match in the cab of the car, weighing heavier the further they crawl into the thick of memorials. Mourners are few and far between this time of day but their recent pilgrimages are spelled out in festive silk flowers dropped in carved marble vases, a tiny pink stocking hanging on the edge of a small grave marker Marty doesn’t want to think too closely about, and the tinsel-wrapped wreath draped over the wingtip of a stone angel. It stands guard over an aboveground crypt, blank eyes staring out across the cemetery.

“There’s one near the back,” Rust says abruptly, not looking at the angel even though Marty knows what he’s talking about as they coast past. “Most times she’s still wearing her halo come January.”

Ancient oaks and what seems like a thousand more headstones pass them by; young and old, black and white, gathered in plots and mausoleums and standing square and stark on their own. When the back wall comes into view the car slows to a stop and shifts into park, engine already feebly ticking under the hood.

Rust holds the keys in his hand and looks at them for a long moment without moving from the driver’s seat. He drops his fist between his thighs and stares straight ahead again, not doing anything but breathing.

Marty unbuckles his seatbelt and clears his throat, eyes drawing up to waver against the side of the other man’s face. “You want me to give you a few minutes?” he asks, not too unlike the way he used to talk to high-strung horses that trembled under his hands.

“No,” Rust says, cracking the door open before easing one boot out into the gravel path. “No,” he says again, rocking a little in the seat like he’s got to find enough momentum to haul himself up and out from beneath the heavy hand of something Marty can’t see. “I’ve had thirty years.”

And so they step out into the open air, slowly unfolding themselves into the cemetery, and the first thing Marty notices is that his jacket seems thinner than it had in Louisiana. Rain threatens on the air and the lingering breeze feels like it might’ve been cut with ice, sticking wet and clammy to his face and hands. He pulls the zipper up on his coat and tucks his hands in his pockets, trying not to hunch against a wind that rustles through the sleeping trees.

Rust stands like a pillar, only his eyes moving in a silent tether to pull Marty closer. His hair ruffles in the breeze and out here beneath the winter sky it’s the color of cold steel, belying how soft Marty knows it’d be if he reached up and ran his fingers through the grey waves.

He feels something like a puppet with its strings tied to Rust’s hands, like he can’t speak or move here unless the other man coaxes him into it. Defeat isn’t a foreign thing in sixty years of Marty’s life, but standing on the cusp of Rust’s biggest loss is a new kind of humbling.

They’d first spoken about coming here, together, a handful of years ago. Marty asked and in the back of his mind, Logic and Reason had denied any real belief that he’d ever make it this far—that despite it all, after everything, Rust would never take him back to a cemetery in Texas to see six letters etched in pale marble, mirrored by the matching name carved like scripture into the cage surrounding his heart.

There are some things you can’t ask of the man who gives everything.

But they’re standing here now and Rust’s boots are already crunching through the gravel path, starting off toward a corner near the rear hedge. Marty wordlessly follows him, glancing over one shoulder to find the rest of the grounds empty beneath the overcast sky, and then hastens his step to catch up with Rust’s stride.

Sitting on a stone bench at the head of her charge they find the angel with the halo, serene face cast low in peace and devotion. Whoever came to see her last left a woven crown of silver wire on her carved hair, welded with tiny metal stars that are already faintly rusting around the sharp edges.

“Been like that every year I’ve come since ‘94,” Rust says, sniffing some through the cold. Marty stays close and feels a jolt of surprise when they turn off the gravel path to walk closer to the angel, wondering if she’s been guarding a child’s headstone all along, but Rust only follows her line of sight until they stop two graves away.

The angel isn’t guarding Sophia Cohle, but it’s watching her.

Rust’s shoulders bow inward the moment he sees the name, and the stiff line of his body gives even more when Marty reaches out to gently touch the back of his arm. The breath he draws in rattles so much that Marty’s right lung hitches in phantom pain, and the wet burn scratching new around the edges of his eyes has nothing to do with the wind.

It already feels like too much at once even though there’s nobody here but the two of them, but then Rust steps forward and sits in the cold grass, a small section of white marble framed between the heels of his boots.

Marty swallows thick and then follows suit, folding himself down on creaking joints until he’s cross-legged on the ground, left side pressed as close and warm as he can get to Rust. He doesn’t have time left to wonder why they’re in the dirt, because when Rust starts talking he doesn’t look at the ground, tilting his head up a little as if he were knelt down and speaking to a child.

That alone nearly does Marty in on the spot.

“Hey, baby,” Rust says, biting into his lip while he looks off somewhere across the graveyard, eyes full of grey sky. “I thought—I thought we’d come by for a little bit. Know it’s been a while.”

His voice is low enough that Marty feels it more than he hears it, soft as a silver bell in the air between them. “I brought Marty with me, this time.”

And the way Rust says it, Marty knows right then that his name is no stranger to this corner of the earth—that it’s been whispered here before, into the wind and the grass and maybe against sun-warmed marble. He wonders what secrets she might know about him, how long ago Rust might’ve brought up his name and when.

He wonders if he’s the first one Rust has ever brought here, and feels the answer rise like a hot welt in the back of his throat when he knows the truth without asking.

Rust finally lowers his eyes to where three fingers are resting on the edge of cool white marble. “Hope you’ve been behavin’ for your grandpop,” he says, and then his voice crumples in his throat, hoarse and brittle when it meets the air. “I miss you every day.”

It’s quiet for a long moment, only the distant toll of what might be a clock tower as it rings in the first hour after midday. Marty thinks Rust might’ve said all he could, words lodged and aching in his throat, but he pulls in another shallow breath and finds his voice again.  
  
“We had a good year,” he says, gently tracing the letters of Sophia’s name with a fingertip. “Planted some more in the garden out back, couple strawberry plants and some of those pretty purple flowers you used to like. Miss Lilah likes them, too. Says they’re the perfect size for fairy houses.”

Marty feels his mouth twitch at that memory and finally draws his eyes up from Rust’s hands, lingering soft along the edge of his jaw.

“She turned five over the summer,” Rust keeps on. “She doesn’t know you yet, but I’ll—I’ll tell her when she’s a little bit older.”

And then the corners of his eyes finally tighten and brim, one hand come up to touch the pinched line of his mouth. “I know you would have loved her, baby.”

The image of a grown woman somewhere between Audrey and Macie’s age, with Rust’s autumn-colored waves before they went silver and the same sharpness in his eyes enters Marty’s mind like an image cut clean from memory, pure and undiluted as anything. And he’s only seen a handful of photographs of Sophia the toddler in her tiny sundress, Sophia the baby covered in the pink frosting from her first birthday cake—but he knows it’s her. What she could've been.

Timelines and happenchance could mix and knot together like gauze threads in his mind but none of it’s possible so Marty doesn’t wonder about the what-ifs, the maybes, anything that might’ve been. He doesn’t do anything but wrap his arms around Rust’s shaking frame and pull him as close as he can, the two of them still sitting awkwardly on the cold ground, and press a dry kiss to the shoulder of his coat.

Rain is starting to come down in a sparse mist, barely anything beyond a faint prickle on the backs of Marty’s hands, but he sniffs and tries to rub what little warmth is left in his fingertips into Rust’s arms. All he gets in response is a wet-sounding cough and the other man leaning heavier into his side, so he clears his throat and says the first thing that comes to mind.

“I was thinkin’ in the spring we could maybe plant some tulips, daffodils if they’ll keep,” Marty says. “Brighten up the yard some.”

Rust slowly nods his head as his hand comes up to wipe across both eyes, trying to blink through the wet cold mixing with the hot burn there. “Yeah,” he mumbles around a throat full of grief, and it isn’t until Marty keeps on talking that he realizes the other man wasn’t speaking to him at all.

“Your daddy said you liked yellow one time, and it ain’t such a bad color,” Marty murmurs, worrying his lip between his teeth. “Makes it a whole lot prettier, knowing you’d have liked it.”

Rust chokes out something between a laugh and a sob, turning to hide his face somewhere around Marty’s neck and shoulder.

“I wish I could’ve known you, sweetheart,” Marty says, reaching up to cup a hand around the nape of Rust’s neck. He doesn’t feel stupid about talking to a marble slab stuck in the ground in Houston—and even if he did, God help him, he couldn’t stop now.

“But maybe one day we can—we can meet somewhere, someday,” Marty says, blinking fast while Rust tries to stifle a wail against him. “I think I’d like that.”

The rain is coming down harder now, enough that it’s gathering like fine glass dust in Rust’s hair. He starts to quiet down after a few minutes, slow and steady, until he’s looking out across the empty cemetery over Marty’s shoulder.

“I didn’t wanna bring flowers,” he says, words hoarse and muffled against the fabric of the other man’s jacket. “Didn’t want them to die in the cold.”

“Maybe next time,” Marty says, feeling like his lungs have turned to lead weights in his chest. “When we can bring some of the ones from the garden.”

“Yeah,” Rust says, and then slowly pulls away, keeping his damp lashes cast low while he reaches into the breast pocket of his flannel shirt and pulls something out.

He warms the tiny figurine between his hands for a moment before setting it on the edge of Sophia’s headstone. “Marty found that,” he says, mostly composed and looking up somewhere into the sky again instead of at the porcelain fawn curled up next to his daughter’s name. “I thought you should have it.”

Rust stands first and then reaches down to help Marty up, damp enough with cold rain now that their jackets are hanging dark and heavy off their shoulders. They stay close as they wander back down the gravel path leading to the car, leaving the angel with the stars in her hair to watch over what they left behind.

 

* * *

 

Traffic is backed up for miles on the I-10 leading back over the state line, and Marty leaves the heat cranked on high, trying to keep the chill licking into their bones at bay. Over halfway home and the horizon is already dark behind them, only lit up by the red and blue strobes marking the accident they finally pass after crawling along the interstate for more than an hour.

Two cars look like they were mauled and shredded with a can opener, one flipped over on its side like a dead animal while a fireman is busy sweeping crumbled glass out of the roadway with a wide broom. The ambulances are already gone but there’s one white sheet draped over a body lying in the median, surrounded by highway patrolmen standing around talking with their hands hitched up their hips, flat-brimmed hats pulled down low over their eyes. One of them sips at a thermos of coffee and laughs, his mind no doubt already trailed back into the Christmas morning he’s looking forward to in a handful of hours. Wife, kids, spiked eggnog and a new necktie—everything and nothing the person under the sheet will be celebrating ever again.

Marty remembers that well enough, though; keeping the blinders up, trying to focus on living a fast life and not the slow pull of death. He doesn’t blame the guy, though he begrudges him for standing around keeping traffic slowed to a crawl while he wants nothing more than to get home and pour himself and Rust both into the hot shower until they thaw out again.

“Shame,” he says as they pass by and pick up speed again, turning down the radio like it somehow matters, and Rust only nods once, looking at the dark sprawl of Louisiana waiting for them ahead.

  
  
  


It’s pushing eight by the time they get back into the waiting arms of Lafayette, lit up and bright with colored lights and decorations flagging them down from homes and little shops tucked along the roadside. There’s two routes they can take to get back home and Marty decides on the road less traveled when he sees a white cross glowing neon through the drape of night, turning off the main drag to follow a little side street past the Catholic church.

He used to come here, years ago, for mass on Christmas Eve. Only ever once or twice but the service was warm and full of marigold light bouncing off the walls as he’d sat in the back with a few other stragglers, listening to songs and story of Mary bringing the Son into the world.

The clergy also kept a pot of mulled wine in the lobby, hot and tangy-sweet, and it’s that memory that draws the Cadillac into the parking lot while Rust peers out the window at the soft lights burning on the decorated lawn.

He doesn’t say anything about mass, watching the crowd gather away from the little makeshift stable standing out against the stained glass glowing behind it. A man and a woman dressed in dyed swaths of linen are flanked by a fair-haired girl in white and a few sheep and lambs hunkered down in beds of straw. There’s a cow and a calf, too, lying down behind the manger where a tiny baby is wrapped in makeshift swaddling clothes.

“A live nativity,” Rust murmurs while Marty parks the car. “They must’ve passed the collection plate around a little more this year, saving up for that.”

“I didn’t bring you here because I wanted to listen to any critical points on the Catholic church,” Marty half-snorts, stepping out onto the asphalt while he balances a hand on his open door. “Sit tight for a minute, I’ll be right back.”

Rust opens his own door once Marty follows a few steps up the walk that’ll lead him to the front of the building. He doesn’t stray from the car, only stands and watches as three men dressed in robes of purple, crimson, and emerald slowly walk up the lawn and kneel at the mother’s feet bearing gifts.

The gathered crowd is quiet, watching only with a murmured word or two before moving along down the lamp-lit walkway. Singing hums from inside the church and rings faintly outside, still clear enough that Rust can pick out a few verses through the chilly night.

Marty comes back a few moments later carrying two steaming paper cups, handing one off to Rust with a small smile. “Best stuff around,” he says, wrapping both hands around his own wine before taking a sip. “Catholics know how to do a birthday party up right.”

Rust brings the cup to his lips and lets the mahogany warmth of it run down his throat, all welcome heat blooming in the cold pit of his stomach. He and Marty fold themselves back into the warmth of the car, just as the singing choir starts down the walk toward the nativity, holding candles up in front of them to light the way.

 

* * *

 

The house is dark when they pull into the driveway, prompting Marty to slip through the garage door and plug in the sleeping lights strung along the eaves first thing. Rust gets the mail out of the box and stands in the driveway for a moment, eyes following the string of bright bulbs until he feels a familiar arm wrap low around his waist and guide him back inside.

Marty protests taking the first shower but finally gives in when Rust makes it clear he isn’t budging, though he leaves the bathroom door open like an invitation while he strips out of his clothes and waits for the water to start steaming up the bathroom. Rust briefly thinks about joining him but finds he’s comfortable enough for now where he’s curled up on the edge of the bed in his undershirt and boxers, listening to the low rumble of a few welcoming purrs.

Once Marty’s given him some space after a long day, he marvels a little at how the warm room feels that much colder. But he stays where he is while he listens to the shower fall against the bottom of the tub, lulling off a bit while he thinks of a night like this thirty years gone, where he sat in bed with a sleepy toddler and slowly read from the pages of a colorful book about talking snowmen and flying reindeer.

He hadn’t gotten up out of her tiny bed until Claire came to pull him down the hall, and Rust closes his eyes against the memory, the ache in his chest gently ebbing away when he wills the peace of this evening bleed back into him. Ghost is curled up near his head and Peach has only been sleeping in the house since this year’s first cold snap, but she cozies up to him and curls her pale orange back, offering it up until he runs his fingers from the top of her head to the tip of her crooked tail.

“Bet she got it caught in a jamb,” Marty says from the doorway, walking back into the room to drop his towel and dig around in the dresser for a clean nightshirt. Chills crop up on the backs of his arms under the ceiling fan and Rust thinks about smoothing them away like dimples in soft clay. “My aunt had an outdoor cat when I was a kid, Porch Kitty was her name. Got half of hers cut off after it got caught in one of them shop fans.”

The little orange and white cat was originally christened _Peaches_ the first week she showed up on the front porch alongside Ghost, but neither man can seem to bother adding the final syllable to her name anymore. “Gives her some character,” Rust murmurs, scratching around two white-tipped ears. “Hmm, Miss Peach?”

Marty pulls his boxers on and sits on the edge of the bed behind Rust, leaning over to pluck at the hem of his undershirt. “Go on and get outta these driving clothes,” he says. “And then come find me when you’re done.”

He runs his hand up Rust’s side and then disappears down the hall, and Rust’s skin and bones feel like they weigh a thousand pounds but he slowly pulls himself up until he’s sitting, stripping naked there in the bedroom before he slips into the bathroom across the hall.

 

   
  


Rust only leaves the bedside lamp burning behind him as he pads down the dark hallway, hitching his sweatpants up higher on one side as he goes. He has one of Marty’s old henley shirts pulled on, dryer-spun into something soft and hanging loose where it’s been left unbuttoned at his throat.

The television isn’t running but the old radio plays low where it sits on the kitchen counter, warbling something indistinct but plainly festive, full of slow piano and the soft tinkle of bells. Their squat little Christmas tree is lit up in full with its messy string lights, filling the living room with soft gold and the dwindling smell of evergreen. The other lights are dimmed down to nothing and it takes Rust a moment to find Marty, but when he steps into the room he finds him over by the humming space heater, sprawled out next to it on the floor.

He’s arranged a rumpled nest of blankets on the carpet, having laid out the thick quilt from the hall closet before piling it up with Rust’s favorite blue flannel and the soft throw pulled off the back of the couch. Marty himself is curled up on his side with one arm tucked under his head, casting a shadow across the floor where the Christmas tree shines nearby, and Rust can’t help but think of rabbit and fox dens in Alaska, tucked warm and safe up under the earth while snow falls overhead.

His footsteps fall silent on the carpet and Marty’s eyes don’t blink open until he feels another body tuck in close at his back, cold toes sneaking up to press against the backs of his calves.

“Figured you’d still be cold,” he murmurs, turning around to sleepily blink at Rust before letting his sparse lashes sink low again. “Plus those damn cats always wind up hoggin’ the bed. Reckon we ought to get them one of their own here pretty soon.”

Rust doesn’t say anything, only shifts closer when he feels Marty reach down to pull the corner of one of the blankets up over their legs. He listens to the measured rise and fall of their breathing, soft and quiet over the heater slowly puffing warmth out to fill the room, and tries to anchor himself here without drifting off too far into the sore hurt of other thoughts.

After a while Marty reaches over and pushes a damp wave off Rust’s forehead, tucking it back into place. “You doing alright?” he asks, soft as anything while he pushes his fingers through the rest of Rust’s hair. “Know we kinda had—kinda had a long one, today.”

He doesn’t mention the dark plum rings hanging like bruises under Rust’s bloodshot eyes, the fact that he was nearly silent the whole ride home from Houston.

Rust breathes out a soft sigh, tucked so close to Marty that his own words linger warm around his face, pushed up somewhere near the other man’s throat. “I miss feeling her sometimes,” he says, wetting his bottom lip while he looks at the fabric of Marty’s shirt through his lashes. “Whatever—whatever it was I’d felt, back then.”

Marty doesn’t say anything even though he knows, but a faint line pulls between his eyes while he listens. Rust can sense the concentration on his face without even having to look, has known Marty long enough to feel his movements rather than see them.

“Knowing she was there with me,” he keeps on, quieter than before. “The warmth of her love where I could feel it.”

Rust breathes in this time, air frayed and battered around the edges. “I had a whole lifetime to forget, only to find her again when I least expected it—right when I thought I couldn't deserve it any less.” He squeezes his eyes shut and reaches up to pinch the bridge of his nose, shaking his head once before going still again. “I don’t know if it’ll ever get easy, Marty. I don’t think it ever will.”

One tear wells and slides down the side of his nose, and Marty is reaching up to brush it away before it can fall into the blankets between them. “She’s with you no matter what,” he says, at a loss for anything else, letting his hand rest gentle on Rust’s neck with one thumb pressing light against the pulse there. “And nobody ever said it had to be easy, because it don’t.”

“Always wished it would, though,” Rust answers, breath hitching in his chest as he snakes a hand up to cover his eyes, metal band flashing on his third finger in a glint of gold. “For you and me.”

Marty lays there for a long moment, feeling Rust’s hurt sag heavy around his own heart. He knows it won’t ever be easy and wouldn’t ever expect it to, but he wants to do what he can, anything to help wash some of the pain out of the other man’s eyes.

He leans closer to press his lips against Rust’s knuckles, waiting until the hand opens like an unfurling wing and drops so he can rest them somewhere against the damp warmth under his eye. “What can I do?” Marty asks, punctuating his words with another kiss. “What do you need?”

Rust’s answer is burning earnest and plain as anything when his eyes rise to meet Marty’s. “You,” he says.

“Me?” Marty asks, smiling a little as he tangles their legs up some underneath the blanket. “You already have that.”

“I know,” Rust says, voice rumbling between them when he slides in flush against Marty, close enough now that their pulses thread together. His next words are more hushed, making landfall somewhere against the side of Marty’s face. “Just wanna feel you.”

There’s no heated rush of a dizzying thrill, none of the usual electric current that swamps Marty’s senses when Rust presses their lips together, whispering against the corner of his mouth. “Please, Marty.”

Marty only wants to hold Rust in his arms, in his hands and his heart and keep him there for as long as the other man will let him, forever and a day if he could manage it. He reaches up and touches Rust’s temple, fingers lightly skimming down over his cheek, and knows he’d do anything this man asked of him.

His man, he thinks. His to hold and to keep.

“You sure?” Marty asks and Rust doesn’t nod but he brushes their eyes together through the pale light, answering him with a look.

And Marty doesn’t quite know what to say but he knows what he wants to do, so he smiles a bit shyly and runs the tip of one finger down into the little hollow at the base of Rust’s throat. “I’d carry you to the bedroom,” he says, “but you’re gonna have to help me off the floor first.”

Rust’s throat gently bobs under Marty’s touch, lashes dipping low again. He feels warm here wrapped up in their little makeshift nest, lulled and sleepy under the static spell of the kitchen radio and ticking heater. The Christmas tree washes the room over in soft amber the color of thick wildflower honey and if he could, he’d probably stay wrapped up here in the cocoon of a quieter life with Marty forever.

“We can stay out here,” he says, feeling Marty’s eyes on him in a question he won’t ask. “Colder back in the bedroom.”

Marty shifts around beneath the blankets and peels away from Rust, easing back up until he’s sitting. He leaves the soft throw tucked around the other man’s hips and then pulls himself to his feet, wincing a little even though he doesn’t complain about the creak and snap low in his back.

“Stay here,” he murmurs, soft footfalls padding out of the room and toward the mouth of the hall. “I’ll be right back.”

When he’s gone, Rust turns over onto his back, reaching out to press a hand into the warmth where Marty had just been lying next to him. He lets his eyes rove over the Christmas tree set up a few feet away, a little crooked on one side and a far cry from anything pretty, but something they’d brought home and decorated together all the same. A few beers, the TV running low, hanging what handful of cheap ornaments they’d managed to gather between them in six years of living under the same roof.

Humble beginnings and endings, Rust thinks. Not that he’d ever want it any other way, so long as he had Marty.

A thread of longing is tugging somewhere behind his navel and he knows it for what it is, knows the familiar ache waiting to be filled and how it heats him up to the brim with pale pink that deepens into balmy fuchsia in all the places where his pulse beats the hardest. Rust reaches beneath the blanket and pushes his sweatpants down over his hips, shivering when his wrist grazes the sensitive heat between his legs.

“All the better, staying out here,” Marty says when he steps back into the room, carrying a pair of pillows and another blanket he must’ve pulled down from the closet. “Ladies are still snuggled up in the middle of the bed anyhow.”

He drops the pillows and then kneels back down next to Rust, leaving a familiar bottle in the blankets between them. Rust works his shirt over his head and leaves it in a pile next to the abandoned sweatpants and it’s precious, maybe, how he can still spot the bashful tinge of color in Marty’s cheeks after all this time, after all they’ve touched and felt through the open sieve of one another.

“Wanted you to be comfortable,” Marty murmurs, gesturing a little lamely toward the pillows, and then settles back down on his side. He smiles again when their eyes meet, as boyish and bright as the day they met over twenty years ago, and all Rust can do is lean in and kiss him.

It goes on like that for a while, all roaming hands and deepening kisses while the radio sets the rhythm for the evening, slow and soft once the faster tempos spiral down into sweeter songs about crackling hearths and snow piling up in the sills. It’ll be Christmas in a few hours but they don’t rush one another, slowly pushing Marty’s clothes off and away until he’s trailing a line of kisses down Rust’s chest and bringing a hand up to rest between his legs, fingers brushing against the hardening heat of him.

Rust’s breath hitches softly, eyes darkening under the fan of his lashes. Marty draws the rest of the blanket down until it’s around Rust’s knees, taking a moment to let his eyes linger over the familiar body in front of him, softer and more scarred than it might’ve been in another life.

But this one belongs to him, he knows, and that thought on its own is enough to make desire melt and bleed down through his body like a liquid sort of wildfire. He picks up the pillows while he’s still got the presence of mind left to remember and gets one tucked up under the small of Rust’s back, angling his hips up and supporting the supple arch there. He kisses the inside of one open thigh while Rust gets the other cushioned behind his head, stomach already tightening while his breath slowly quickens.

Marty gentles and coaxes Rust’s body through the ritual of getting ready, listening to his hitching sighs and soft swears over the sound of the Christmas radio. When Rust is begging for him to stop, Marty eases up between the other man’s legs and lets himself be pulled into the cradle of Rust's thighs, not joined yet but burning in all the places they touch.

Their eyes meet in the feeble light again, faces inches apart, and Marty drops his lips to press a kiss against Rust’s hairline and then another against the corner of his eye. When he pulls back again to look two blue eyes are shining, reflecting drops of gold from the tree.

“Tell me when,” Marty whispers, reaching down to hitch one of Rust’s legs around his waist. “Anything you want.”

And Rust needs him, needs him close enough that maybe tonight could finally mesh their lines and colors together for good, finally save him from the vigil of having to hold on so tight. He could tell Marty this, could say it without an ounce of shame in his voice, but opts for pulling the familiar body closer instead.  
  
Rust's kiss says everything he can't, and when finally Marty pushes into him he only arcs his body into it on instinct, moaning long and low into the other man’s mouth when he feels Marty fill him up to the hilt.

They stay like that for a few moments, breathing against one another while their bodies adjust to the welcome shock of fitting together. Marty only moves to tilt his chin up and find Rust's lips again, one hand placed soft and reverent against the side of his face while he kneels between the valley of his thighs.

Rust clenches his body and Marty gasps against his mouth, rolling his hips so the other man’s eyes flicker and slide shut. He doesn’t fall into any heated and quickened pace but rocks into Rust without any hurry, grinding against him until colors start lighting up in starbursts behind his eyes.

“Marty,” Rust says, gasping his name out into the quiet room. “God, Marty, _please—_ ”

“I got you,” Marty rasps out, bracing one hand by Rust’s head while he gets the other tucked behind his hips to angle him up further, trying his damndest to wring out the pleasure he knows is waiting for him to find. “I’m gonna take care of you.”

He thrusts in deeper and Rust’s mouth drops open in a wordless sound, hands pawing up Marty’s back to tighten around his shoulders. They start to rock and move faster, the blankets tangling up around them, the room gone hot enough now that both bodies are beginning to gleam with sweat.

Age and injury keeps this from being as easy as it once was and Marty tries to keep his breath and pacing steady, following all the little sounds Rust still makes for him like guideposts, slowing out into a rhythm they can fall into together while he drops forward to kiss the man he loves.

When Marty’s hand splays wide over Rust’s stomach and drags down to the length of him, it doesn’t take long to work Rust up to the edge alongside him, bucking forward while he keeps a hand around the silken heat of his cock.

“Tell me,” Marty chokes out, trying to bring them there together. “Tell me you feel me, baby.”

But Rust is gone beyond the possibility of words now, eyes fogged over with the kind of haze that he’s only ever shown to Marty, and pulls the other man down into the mindless collision of a kiss. Marty’s hands brace on either side and then Rust is gasping up into his mouth, trembling from head to toe as he finally tips over the edge and lets Marty’s hands and body wring the breath out of him in a burst of release.

Marty chases the fire through Rust and feels all his coiled tension snap free when the other man breaks and sobs against him, crossed ankles pulling him further into the divine heat of his body. And any strength that might’ve been left in Marty bleeds out after that, leaving him to slump down against Rust amidst the hammerfall of their hearts, burying his face close against the other man’s neck.

“I love you,” he gasps there, reminding Rust so he knows, knows it now and doesn’t ever forget. “More and more every goddamn day.”

Rust’s legs slowly sink down, one heel pushing through the blankets like they're made of water. He wraps his arms around Marty and holds him close, cupping the back of his neck while his eyes drip shut. He’s quiet for a time, waiting until their breathing mellows out into something softer, and then turns his face to press a kiss above Marty’s ear.

“Always,” he says, running the pads of his fingers up and down Marty’s back, keeping him there for just a little while longer.

  
  
* * *

 

Christmas rings in at the stroke of midnight, and they never do make it back to bed.

A damp cloth fetched from the kitchen cleans up any mess and their clothes still lay scattered and forgotten on the floor, dark pools of shadow in the faint light coming off the twinkling tree. The heater clicked off hours ago and Marty long since pulled one of the soft blankets up over their bodies, snuggling in close to Rust in the nest neither one wants to empty just yet.

They drift in and out of waking for a while, dozing off under the music on the radio and the tempered rise and fall of each other’s breathing. There are a handful of wrapped boxes under the tree that Marty’s idly contemplating when Rust stirs against him, drowsily shifting through the thin veil of sleep.

“Better be glad we don’t got a chimney,” Marty says, chuckling a little as he turns over to press a kiss against Rust’s shoulder. “Saint Nick’d be in for a rude awakening, rolling in on this scene.”

“Already knows you’re on the naughty list,” Rust murmurs, tucking in close against the other man, cracking open one eye when Marty laughs outright. “He wouldn’t be any kind of fuckin’ surprised.”

“You sayin’ what we get up to is naughty?” Marty asks, mostly teasing, but Rust slowly blinks before leaning in to press his answer against Marty’s lips.

“Naw,” he says, shaking his head while he gets both arms circled around the other man’s waist and goes still again. “Didn’t mean it like that.”

Marty smiles, leaving a kiss in Rust’s hair. “Merry Christmas, babe,” he says, not pushing the matter any further. “Reckon you’ve been pretty good this year.”

“Maybe,” Rust mumbles after a moment, already fading fast back under the drape of sleep. His face has smoothed out some, more peaceful now on the cusp of rest and well-earned slumber. “Don’t matter, though.”

“How’s that?” Marty asks, feeling his own eyes starting to grow heavy again.

“You oughta know by now,” Rust says, voice only a faint murmur in the quiet room around them, even though Marty feels it through his body like a second heartbeat. “I already got everything I need.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> The Christmas hymn is based off an arrangement of Georgina Rossetti's "Love Came Down at Christmas."
> 
> Thank you for reading, guys, and feel free to drop me a line here if you'd like. I know the anticipation for the last chapter of WWG is running a bit high and while it won't be finished in time for Christmas, I do promise you'll be seeing it sooner rather than later. Happy holidays!


End file.
